Hubitat C7 replacing Homey

This post can be useful for someone, who is considering a change of hub J

I love home automation and tent to try always new devices/hubs. First of all, I have to say I’m very positive about Homey. It can provide full automation and integration without the necessity of technical knowledge. I am using it for almost 2 years and everything works with only some minor issues.

From my curiosity, I decided to test Hubitat C7 Hub. I bought it new for 110€, which is compared to Homey, very positive price. I was surprised with size of the Hub, smaller than a cigarettes pack J. After initial test I was quite disappointed by the user interface and the way how to deal with devices, drivers, apps… I turned the Hub off and continued to use Homey. But then, I experienced internet outage for over a day and I wasn’t able to access Homey because of it. Homey started to have also problems with wifi connectivity and this kicked myself to give to Hubitat second try (Its fully local solution without need of internet access with cable LAN connectivity).

Step by step I was moving devices to Hubitat. I was very surprised, once you learn how to use it, how fast and effective you can be. Rule Machine is providing endless possibilities for “flows” logic to be designed. This way, I was able to replace for e.g. 5 flows in Homey with one logic defined in RM. No timers, countdowns etc needed, because it’s included already in rule machine. Logical conditional structures enable to make complex “flows” in one place. I started with in my case more complex logic – heating. If this will work in HE, I will be able to do everything else. So far, it seems to work perfectly, changing heating plans according to presence, controlling heating zones, using various temp sensors etc. Then I moved to other devices and now Im almost 80% done with migration (70 devices so far).

Zigbee and zwave connectivity: another positive surprise so far is zigbee and zwave performance. Compared to Homey, response is much faster, no problem with reception/range so far. Zigbee is providing also group control functionality – all devices from group reacts immediately at once to commands. Also logging is available, so you can see what is happening in hub. Response to triggers is much faster than on Homey (e.g. it took 2-3 seconds to turn zigbee light on based on wifi switch status in Homey, in Hubitat its instant). Time will show how stable connections will be and whether device drops (especially zigbee battery devices) will occur.

User interface: as already mentioned, this is more “technical” compared to Homey or Fibaro. However, once you get used to it, its pretty fast and from usability perspective (when defining rules and conditions for home automation) much better. One downside is, direct device control without creating of dashboards. You need to either create dashboards to access devices and control them, or to access them directly over “technical interface” which is not so comfortable for direct control. My ambition is to have basic controls available over the dashboards, rest should be automated or controlled over remotes/buttons if needed.

To sum it up, I’m very surprised how such a small device can perform. There is still some work to be done to fully replace Homey, but I’m very positive that with big community knowledge it should be feasible.

Let me know if you are interested in more detailed info, or specific topic on HE.

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Check the app „The Home Remote“ (iOS)

You can link your Hubitat to it and enjoy easy and good looking dashboard

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And you forgot to mention, that Hubitat C7
has the new Zwave 700 series chip,
has an OTAU Plugin for updating zwave devices,
will be compatible with the new Zwave Long Range
Can pair multiple zigbee devices simultaneously,
has a really really big community,
Developers are active in the hubitat community,
It runs amazing fast,
Has Ethernet

and much much more.

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Did you try the Home Remote app?

Yes I did, but I need more custom layout. One that HE offers is OK for me. E.g. lihe this one:

Check also this out, if you want to have a good looking dashboard

https://hubitat.ezeek.us/smartly/

@Igy, Sorry to ask but what’s your relation to Hubitat?

None. Just a regular user.

@Igy, thanks for sharing.
Does it work with custom sensors? Like espHome?
How about MiLight?

greetings

espHome, Im not sure about that, because Im not using it. Regarding Mi Light, according to community info, Hubitat has native Yeelight support. But Same as with esp, Im not using it neither.

:+1:I should try it myself or read more about it to see what is supported. I have a mixture of devices. I am using HA with its benefits right now but homey is also doing its thing right now. Still searching for the best (as possible) system. They all have their pros and cons.

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Homey is very good device and easy to use for end user as well. If you have HA runnig, its very easy way how to integrate it with HE. This way Im able to add Homekit devices to HE over the HA Homekit support.

Hubitat has amazing homekit app and it works flawless. But you‘ll need homebridge plugin on a raspberry pi

How can it have amazing Homekit support and require a separate Homebridge install? Or do you mean that there’s a Homebridge plugin that has amazing Hubitat support?

sorry für misunderstanding. There‘s an amazing Homebridge plugin for Hubitat

Which has to run on another device (for example RasPi) ?

Yes

Hi to all,

I’ve gone the same way. I already tried some smart home hubs and came to Homey shortly. I gave up on Homey because it didn’t fit my requirements in terms of reliability and safety. After sending it back I ordered a Hubitat Elevation C7 and I want to share my opinion as objective as possible experience.

On the device design side Homey wins 10:2 and I’m happy that the HE is so small that I can put it on a shelf against the wall, so that nobody sees it. The led is far to bright on HE and far away from the nice ring of the Homey.

Talking about interface design, Homey wins 10:2 again. The interface of HE remembers me Windows 3.1 and the logic how you have to select a popup menu to edit lines or to remove them even my good old times where I tried ProDos on my Apple II computer :wink: .

The ease of use is also in favour of Homey with 10:5. It should be 10:3, but the fact that you have to drag cards down to get OR or ELSE is absolutely not intuitive and it took me some time to realise that.

HE wins clearly the Z-Wave range contest with 10:2. The range s impressive for such a small device, point.

The reliability goes also to HE with 10:8. Personally I would say 10:6 but some users seem to be really satisfied with the reliability. Sorry, it didn’t work for me and one of three things did work sometimes and sometimes not. Finally, even 2 times not working against 8 times working is not acceptable for me. On HE, I connected the same devices and I did not get a single time out error and all rules work like a charm.

HE wins the power of automation with 10:1. With the rule machine on HE you can do nearly everything inside one rule, not multiple rules. Nested IF - ELSE IF - ELSE - END IF conditions and setting multiple devices at once, and much more is possible. This has naturally a pice to pay and that’s a steep learning curve and an ugly interface that drives me sometimes crazy because I don’t understand why I can’t edit a line, so that I delete it and insert a new one and so on. But once the rule runs, you can feel the power, absolutely not comparable to the simple flows of Homey.

The price does not need a rating, HE cost 1/3 of Homey.

Some words about the device choices and options. HE supports a mass of devices natively (HE drivers) out of the box and my old Zipato and Neo Coolcam window contacts that were problematic to handle with Homey are just working with generic Z-Wave Contact drivers. With HE you can also use Community Apps as with Homey, but there is a major difference. The apps are not installed as binaries, but as human readable groovy code. So everyone can see the source code, adopt it or continue development. A developer leaving the community is not a major problem as others can simply take over the development. This a second level of reliability.

The dashboard in HE is usable but that’s all. There are alternatives out, but they are mostly online and not local. Here Homey wins 10:5.

Finally, as HE is 100% local the access from the outside is a pay-service. Even if it costs only 2,5€ per month, Homey wins 10:0.

So should you switch to HE ? All depends on your requirements. Homey handles more protocols, even when HE features the most important ones, Z-Wave (even series 700), Zigbee, Wifi… If you need the other ones, HE may be to limited for you. If you do not want to learn how to use rule machine, are not ready to use an oldish interface and are satisfied with Homey’s reliability stick with Homey. If you look for a more powerful automation, more pro like but low priced than give HE a chance.

For me it was the right choice to go to HE as I wanted more powerful rules, 100% reliability and pro like system and I’m willing to invest time in it. The community is very active and helpful and really friendly. Critics are considered as positive and HE themselves consider critics and try to make HE better with every release. I want to just forget HE once everything runs fine and chances are good :wink: . Please don’t be offended, Homey is nice and if you are happy with it, smile.

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I think that once you have idea, how dashboard should look like, you can do it in HE. Much more options than with Homeys Homeydash.
HE remote access is possible for free (dashboards), so if you design your dashboards correctly, you have no reason to connect to hub. But anyway, VPN is alternative and free solution for this.

Yes, but again, you have to understand how the dashboard can be configured and it takes time and many posts to read and many videos to view to understand how to configure tiles and your background to get away from this ugly colorful windows 8 tiles look. But even then, I only have a “thermostat” template for the Spirit Valves. It shows me the fan settings, but I have no fan. I can set the mode, but not all modes are avalable. I can set the temperature with two arrows, but no way to limit them. A good dashboard design (for my children for example) should allow me to configure a tile to set a value between 8 and 23. The possibilities are much to limited. Even if a Homey dashboard is less powerful, in Homey the valves had a nice “device” (not fields and cluncky buttons as in HE) interface and I would be happy to have a tile on the dashboard to open the nice “device” interface. As this nice interface does not exist the tile should allow you to design it.